With the increasing down-scaling of integrated circuits and increasingly demanding requirements to the speed of integrated circuits, transistors need to have higher drive currents with increasingly smaller dimensions. Fin Field-Effect Transistors (FinFETs) were thus developed. In conventional FinFET formation processes, the semiconductor fins may be formed by forming trenches in a silicon substrate, filling the trenches with dielectric materials to form Shallow Trench Isolation (STI) regions, and then recessing the top portions of the STI regions. The silicon substrate portions between the recessed portions of the STI regions thus form semiconductor fins, on which the FinFETs are formed.
The silicon substrate may be a (100) substrate or a (110) substrate. If a (100) substrate is used to form the FinFETs, the resulting fins have rough and slightly slanted sidewall surfaces, and suffer from proximity effects. In addition, the profiles of the fins in pattern-dense regions are different from the profiles of the fins in pattern-sparse regions. On the other hand, if a (110) substrate is used to form the FinFETs, the resulting fins have high-quality and vertical sidewall surfaces. The device performance of the FinFETs based on the (110) substrate, however, may be sacrificed due to the use of the (110) substrate.